I came to the battle through all my symptoms coming mainly from the digestive track and urine track. I ignored the white coating of my tongue as I was never bothered by it. I even thought it totally normal for a human to have a white coat on the tongue as I had it all my life.

First here in the forum I heard about people coming to the candida battle because of candida on the tongue.

Now my question: Would it not be a good indicator to keep the candida on my tounge not doing the oil pulling so I am able to see the progress of the entire body fighting the candida. Should it not be logical that the moment my immune-system, my leaky gut, the good bacteria are well in place the candida should be eliminated from my body through these. Then I could see the progress through the change on my tounge.

Meaning, that if the candida varnishes from my tongue progress is made. If it grows something is wrong.

I am doing something similar. I also have a slight film on my tongue and have not done oil pulling. I noticed that it gets better or worse depending on the reactions/die-off I have. My hope is that it will go away once my candida is in check.

But if it will help me to get better sooner, then I will do the oil pulling.

I am doing something similar. I also have a slight film on my tongue and have not done oil pulling. I noticed that it gets better or worse depending on the reactions/die-off I have. My hope is that it will go away once my candida is in check.

But if it will help me to get better sooner, then I will do the oil pulling.

Kirsty

Hi Kirsty, thanks for replying to my post. Could you please descripe your back and forth development in connection to the die-off? What really killed my spirit is that I could not see a pattern in my battle. I noticed too that at one time the tongue was very lightly covered only to find out that the next day while under heavy die-off attacks the tongue was much more white than normal. I didnt change then the diet and got confused asking myself, what did I do wrong. Or is it normal that even in the die off the candida swells big?

Although my symptoms are not the same as yours, your concerns and mine are much the same. I feel that the hardest part of all of this for me is the inability to be really sure of much of anything. Is this die-off? Or is my candida somehow thriving on something that I didn’t expect? Or do I not have candida at all, but instead some other disease or problem? These questions recur over and over…. Nothing seems to remain consistent enough for me while on this diet to pin down any symptom to anything near certainty. So, thanks for being the voice of this on the forum. I’ll try to speak up more often.

Anyway, on to the tongue. I also have this coating on my tongue, and even moreso, perhaps. It is not just a coating, but is kind of textured, especially toward the back of the tongue, and at times can look almost like thick white “hairs”. I brush it, scrape it, etc., but it never fully comes off.

I never experienced this (or at least never noticed it) until a heavy course of antibiotics (which I believe is the beginning of all my symptoms). So in my mind, for all of this time, I’ve been associating it with what I believe is my systemic candida infection and, like you, I’ve been using it as a measurement of my progress – looking at my tongue and saying “well, if it’s still on my tongue, then it must be the same throughout my digestive system.

However, I am starting to feel this may not be the case. I have finally gone to a doctor who is very familiar with candida and especially with oral thrush, as he treats many patients with HIV (which I don’t have). On this forum, there seems to be a general consensus to call any coating on the tongue “oral thrush”. However, this doctor told me that there is quite a difference between true oral thrush and what I have on my tongue, which he says is called “geographic tongue”. Oral thrush, he says, looks more like someone painted your tongue or spots in your mouth with cottage cheese. If you search google images, you can find many pictures of this.

For what it’s worth (and I’m still not sure what my opinion is on this), he said that geographic tongue may or may not be caused by yeast, and that the cause for this is generally considered to be unknown. I’ve researched online a bit, myself, and found most websites say the same – no consistency as far as what it is, what causes it, how to treat it, etc.

Anyway, I have been strictly on the diet now for three months. On top of that, I have been regularly using coconut oil, raw garlic, and oregano oil as antifungals during this time, as well as good probiotics that were recommended on this forum. On top of that, I also took a three-week course of Diflucan (a prescription antifungal – my doctor said “well, if you think that your problem is related to candida, you can give this a try”), which I just completed. I also steadily increased the wild oregano oil drops progressively, and was even applying them directly to my tongue.

My point here is that despite supposedly starving candida for three months, and attacking it in these different ways, including a strong prescription antifungal, there has been no consistent change in my tongue. None at all. Needless to say, I found this to be very disappointing.

I feel that after all this, at least as far as my tongue goes, I am leaning toward the conclusion that the coating on my tongue is not related to candida. I will still be continuing the diet and the antifungals for now, because it has only been three months, but I don’t think I will any longer be using the appearance of my tongue as an indicator of my progress with what I believe to be candida.

Sorry that this became quite a long post, but I hope it helps in some way.

I also had the problem with the white coating on the tongue. It shows that you still have candida and that it is ever-present. After the 4-5 month mark on the diet, it completely cleared up dramatically. Now I do not have it as far as I can tell.

I did not do oil pulling or anything else, I just got healthier and took a lot of supplements.

The other strange change I noticed as this happened is that my tastebuds completely were altered. Cigarrettes tasted completely different (in a bad way) and the foods I eat taste different as well.

I also have a mild white film (can’t remember since when), which was one of the clues to me that a candida diet might alleviate my other, significantly more problematic, symptoms. At first it seemed to clear up after starting the diet; it even went almost entirely away for a day or so about two weeks in, then the white gunk suddenly came back. I then read the post about toothpaste and started using baking soda instead. Again, the white gunk began to recede, then suddenly came back again to its previous levels, despite not having “cheated” in any way in regards to the diet nor toothpaste. Since then I’ve pretty much given up on clearing it up, or at least set the issue aside for now.

So personally, I have not noticed any correlation between the amount of white gunk on my tongue and my other symptoms. Even when my skin had almost entirely cleared up last week, it was still there. Even when my skin suddenly got worse again about a week ago (still trying to figure out why), my tongue looked the same. So either it’s really resistant candida, or maybe it’s something else. I suspect the white stuff on your tongue is similar to the spit test: it might not be a valid indicator of what’s happening in the rest of your body. But that’s just from my personal experience.

If/once my skin symptoms are all cleared up (and stay cleared up this time!) I’ll try to do something about my tongue. I’ve read kefir can work wonders (the grains are in the mail), and I plan on trying oil pulling. However, since the tongue issue feels more cosmetic than anything else (it’s not like it hurts or is doing damage as far as I can tell), I don’t consider it a priority.

Hi guys, I will conduct a test with my tongue and see what that is all about. I am not pulling garlic water and see how that goes, then I will try it with Kefir.

I was quite impressed to see that my neighbours and my family had very clean and dark pink looking tongues but no white film at all on the the tongues. When I saw it I understood that mine is not healthy looking. And mine has only a white film over it but is not fluffy or anything. Still it looked sick compared with theirs.

Have a check with people you know and feel great in their health how their tongue looks like. I am surprise that the doctors dont ask any more to open the mouth. I remember when I was a kid they always checked the tongue first. Now, they dont do it any more if one doesn’t complain of pain in the throat.

When I went to the doctor several weeks ago hoping to get an antifungal (they have given me one in the past and I thought…what could it hurt?). She looked at my tongue and said that she didn’t think it looked like oral thrush to her but more like what Riinehart described as geographic tongue. She also said that it would clear up after a while. It sounded to me like it was a cycle the tongue goes through kind of like when a snake looses it’s skin. Gross. She also explained that don’t really understand why it happens or what causes it.

Thomas, you asked that I describe the cycle that I’ve noticed with my tongue with die off. If I am having a bad day, I tend to notice that my tongue has a film more quickly. Usually when I eat something (especially if I eat yogurt of kefir) then it goes away for a few hours. The longer I go without eating something, the worse it usually gets. On my bad days…it is bad all day.

My film is a lot like what Riinehart described as well. It’s not so much white as off white I guess. And it makes my tongue look sickly. 🙁

I would give kefir a try! Even if it does not help your tongue right away, it will still help you get better by introducing more probiotics into your system.

Yea, I really hope that maybe with all of us trying different things we can find some kind of consistency in all of this.

For what it’s worth, I drink about 2 servings of kefir everyday, as well as 1 or 2 servings of greek yogurt. I also use a lot of coconut oil, went through a progression of more and more oregano oil drops for a few weeks in a row, as well as a 3-week Diflucan regimen… all to no avail. No difference at all, except for the usual ups and downs, one day a little better, one day a little worse.

One interesting note, though… the one time that my tongue was almost entirely clear was when I did a 5-day fast at the start of my diet, a little over 3 months ago. Around the 4th and 5th days, my tongue was almost completely clear. Then, although all of the foods I’m eating supposedly shouldn’t feed candida, the coating came back, same as ever.

As I’ve stated before on the forum, a full Candida infestation in the intestines is home to billions of Candida albicans, and it’s really difficult to get through the infestation without having at least a mild coating on the tongue. A lot of people don’t even realize they’ve had this coating until it clears up, and suddenly they can actually see the depth of the crevices on the tongue which were previously full of the overgrowth (small crevices in the tongue are an inherited trait that occurs in some people).

“If” you have a Candida overgrowth, and if you also have a ‘furry’ looking coating on your tongue, this coating will remain to some degree until the Candida population is very close to normal once again. The oil-pulling therapy can help to relieve the coating to a degree, but it will always be possible for it to return as there will be “no consistent change” in the thrush (mild or strong) as long as you have an overgrowth of Candida albicans in your intestines and colon.

On December 26 you wrote to us, “With regard to having bad days, i also still have some very bad days, but they are much less frequent than in the past.” Has this changed since you wrote it? If this has not changed, this is a sign that the Candida population has lessened to at least a small degree, which is called “progress.”

If none of your symptoms have improved, then it might help us to help you if we know what your diet is consisting of on a normal basis as well as which probiotic you are now taking and the amount (billions) that you take daily. Also, are you taking any vitamins or supplements that you did not name in your post?

Thanks for writing. I feel like I have been steadily improving overall since starting the diet, and for the foreseeable future I plan to continue to follow it very strictly. Perhaps the worst symptom for me at the time before I started the diet was a horrible brain fog that accompanied the bloating and other symptoms, and I am happy to say that this is the symptom that has lessened the most since on the diet. I’m finally back to thinking clearly, not experiencing these awful crashes in the middle of the day (much much less, anyway), and feeling more energized in general (although still not up to a “normal” level yet). My urinary tract problem, which I spoke of a bit in another post, still hasn’t improved, and neither has my abdominal discomfort/bloating, for the most part, although there are better and worse days.

Anyway, my diet comes directly from your posts on the forum; it generally consists of a mix of eggs (usually 4-6/day), avocados, salad greens like arugula, green veggies (broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, string beans, etc.), greek yogurt (1-2 servings/day), kefir (1-2 servings/day). I alternate between millet and buckwheat, or sometimes a mixture of both, and the coconut bread recipe, as far as starchy stuff goes. I cook with only extra virgin cold pressed olive oil and organic coconut oil, and consume several tablespoons of the coconut oil each day. I’ve also started adding in half a granny smith apple every couple days, and yesterday cooked some lentils and very happily ate about 1/2 cup with no adverse effects so far.

With regard to vitamins, each day I take 1000mg Vit C, 5,000iu Vit A, 1400iu Vit D (which I increased from 400 because a blood test showed I was slightly low), 5,000 mcg of Biotin, 1,500 mcg Vit B12, and a Calcium Magnesium Zinc combined vitamin with 1,000, 400, and 25 mg, respectively. I checked all of these for bad ingredients, of course. The probiotic I take is UltimateFlora 15 Billion by RenewLife. I take one per day.

That’s all I can think of right now. If anything seems out of place, please let me know. Thanks for what you do here, it was inspiring to read your post-holiday post!

The first thing I can suggest is this: I think it’s time for you to change probiotics, the one you’re taking is fine as a starter, but it’s time for a stronger one. If you do one round (one bottle) of Innate Response, Flora 50-14 containing the DDS-1 Lactobacillus acidophilus you should see a change.

Rinehart; The diet you’re on sounds fine for the most part. Millet is actually capable of feeding the Candida to a degree, so this is why it’s considered a “test food” in phase one as some people have a problem progressing when eating it. Just for safety sake, I would remove it from your diet for at least four weeks to give the new probiotic a better chance to do its thing.

Are you taking Molybdenum? This will basically take away the die-off symptoms and protect the liver and kidneys from the aldehyde and other toxins. In this way, you should be able to know if the symptoms are from the Candida itself since you’ll experience very few if any symptoms of die-off.

Thanks, Able, I will definitely give that probiotic a try when this one runs out. I’ll also try to remove millet from my diet for a while, as well, though it pains me… I eat it pretty often.

As far as starchy things go, between millet, buckwheat, oat bran, and our coconut bread, which would you say is the safest bet, and why? I consume all four here and there (millet the most), and I don’t seem to notice feeling any better or worse with one or the other so far, though it’s hard to tell.

I forgot to mention in the last post that I do take molybdenum (Mineralife brand liquid), usually daily, depending on how I’m feeling, but I find it (like most other things) extremely hard to guage its effectiveness.

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Lisa Richards is an expert in digestive health and the author of the Ultimate Candida Diet program. She writes regular posts on the causes, symptoms, and treatment of Candida, and has helped thousands of Candida sufferers recover their health.

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